In a significant move impacting its corporate workforce, e-commerce titan Amazon eliminated 660 jobs in Manhattan during October, as revealed by a report from the New York Post based on official state records.
Ground Zero: The Manhattan Offices Hit Hardest
Amazon officially confirmed that the layoffs affected nine different office locations in the city, but emphasised that the cuts were confined to corporate employees and did not impact warehouse or delivery staff. The report pinpointed two specific addresses that bore the brunt of the reductions.
The offices at 450 W 33rd St, located near the Hudson Yards development, saw 233 positions eliminated. Meanwhile, the company's location at 424 Fifth Ave., which is the former Lord & Taylor flagship building that Amazon acquired in 2020 for a staggering $1 billion, experienced 182 layoffs.
Analyst Puzzlement and the Official Reasoning
This development is part of a broader wave of job cuts, coming just after Amazon confirmed plans to trim nearly 14,000 corporate roles globally. The scale of the layoffs has raised eyebrows among industry experts. Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives told the New York Post, "I believe the vast majority of these cuts are tech layoffs for Amazon, and NYC was not spared. The size of the Amazon cuts remains a head scratcher given the battle for talent and the AI revolution in motion."
However, during Amazon's recent earnings call, CEO Andy Jassy provided a different explanation. He clarified that the layoffs were not motivated by financial pressures or the company's adoption of Artificial Intelligence. Instead, he attributed the decision to a cultural misalignment, stating that the affected employees "did not align with Amazon's culture." Jassy explicitly said, "The announcement that we made a few days ago was not really financially driven, and it's not even really AI-driven, not right now at least. It really — it's culture."
A Wider Restructuring and Future Job Cuts
The layoffs have impacted various departments across the company, including logistics, payments, video games, and the crucial cloud computing division, according to a Bloomberg report.
In a blog post last month, Beth Galetti, Amazon's Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology, framed the cuts as a strategic move to make the company leaner and more focused. She stated, "The reductions we’re sharing today are a continuation of this work to get even stronger by further reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets."
Galetti also hinted that more job cuts are on the horizon, even as the company plans to hire in key strategic areas by 2026. Reports from Reuters, citing sources, suggest Amazon plans to cut approximately 30,000 corporate jobs in this round, which would constitute about 9% of its global office-based workforce.
Explaining the rationale behind the cuts during a period of good company performance, Galetti pointed to the rapid pace of technological change. She remarked, "Some may ask why we’re reducing roles when the company is performing well. What we need to remember is that the world is changing quickly. This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it's enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before."
